Accidentally Successful
Does this really happen?
Did you wake up at 4am, pick up your phone, start scrolling and find yourself still hooked into all that positivity as the sun rose this morning? Oh yeah, I hear you. That endless stream of all the ways to make millions by lunchtime. The crazy ways Amazon and AI are able to work together and create you bundles of joyful zeros in your bank account. The many gazillion ways you can beat the system, start at the new ground floor of the latest tech craze, or teach others how to trade on other people’s investments.
It’s endless.
And now, even Kim Kardashian is jumping on the bandwagon and offering a masterclass on how to make the kind of billion dollar industry she created. Yes folks, you read it here second. ‘KK is ready to say say how to Dooo IT!’
Puhhleeze! Aren’t you exhausted by all the hype and bs? I know I am. I’ve been doing the books and amazon successful expertise industry work for a long time now and I can tell you that if it looks like a shortcut it IS most likely going to make someone rich and it ‘aint you.
Yes there are trends that work, ideas that need to be explored and worked out but these are trends. Established researched ideas that are improvements in a system that is already working and needs refining is not the same as something that sounds like jumping past a whole line of solid expertise.
Let me give you an example.
I know people who made a lot of money trading products on Amazon by drop shipping as the middle-men focused on an excess or seasonal stock system that they tapped into many years ago when Amazon was still in it’s infancy. In fact I’ve met a couple of people more recently who also tapped into similar processes and are making a tidy living from that. But they are the exception and they got in early and they are not making millions.
Now, when you hear about people teaching that same thing, with a $5000 course you can whip through in a few weeks, or even days, and you don’t do your due diligence before you pay your money, you’re an idiot. But there are loads of idiots being sucked into exactly that scenario. It’s the same with people saying they write 100 books a year and get quatrillions of royalties from that work.
If they’re putting out that much productivity a year, they’re likely using either AI and/or $5 p/h labor from somewhere in Asia, and they are also likely using AI to ramp up their quotas. Quality writing does not happen in five minutes - it’s hours worth of development, story lines, editing, re-writing, design skills and publishing processes.
The hunger we have for quick fixes for our cashflow challenges when things are tight in the economies we live in are understandable, but it also sadly means there are many gulible fools out here waiting to be sucked into the savvy marketing machines designed only to take money from the masses for teaching how to do something that simply does not work in 99% of cases.
If you really want to create a great side hustle, think about what you can do that solves a problem, delivers value that people want to pay for, and then impress the heck out of those who sign up for what you’re offering so your reputation grows and your bank balance is a reflection of that.
It takes around 1000 nights to become an overnight success in most instances. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great book (Outliers) explaining the concept of 10,000 hours of practice before you can really become an expert in something. The only way to fast track that is to work with a brilliant coach, get a brilliant team together to support you and get on the same page together to make real magic happen. And even then you’ll still need to commit to a level of excellence that does not mean short cuts taken.
Are you in for the quick fix or the ultimate adventure in doing great work for the best rewards over time?
